Looking for opinions on nested base routers

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We a medium size shop that is looking to grow. We are looking for a new nested base router to purchase and are looking for some input and reviews that people have of these machines. In particular we are looking at either a Komo Fusion XL, Komo Xtreme XL, or a Stiles/Weeke Vantage 200/512. I have heard some mixed reviews about the Komo's so I am really interested to see what people have to say about them. Any input would be appreciated though.

I nearly bought a Komo years ago, but they were going through a lot of turmoil back then and making lots of customers and suppliers unhappy. Even closed their production facility and moved it overseas. I have to admit I don't know if they have recovered from that mess or not. You would have to speak to an owner of a newer machine, since they would be like a different manufacturer. Stiles sells pretty good machines and they seem to stock a zillion parts, but the last Weeke I worked with was at least 10 years ago. Big question. What are you making? Just nesting cabinet parts, or do you plan to machine a lot of solids. I have a nesting machine and we do both panels and solids very well, but not all nesters do well with the solids.

That's interesting news to hear about the Komo's. They are based out of New Jersey now so I never would have guessed that they moved production overseas. We machine surfaces ranging from 11/16" up to 1 1/2".

Komo used to be headquartered and production in Sauk Rapids Minnesota. Really an amazing facility. Why they shut it down, I really don't know. You say that you cut surfaces. I'm assuming panel products, so the Vantage should be ok if that is one of your choices. Lots and lots of Stiles customers out there, talk to some. I can't help you with that, but I know some top notch guys that sell their machines.

You haven't really stated what you're looking to cut, and what kind of output you're looking for in this machine.

My experience with Komo's are relegated to the older machines. I have a fair amount of experience with Weeke's though. Been around several point to points and we just purchased a Weeke Vantech 5 x 10, with auto outfeed.

The Vantech is the Vantages little brother. I've been more than pleased with this machine and it's capabilities. It does not have a saw, or horizontal drilling capabilities, but I can nest 60-70 sheets in a day on it if need be with one person.

I highly recommend stiles/ weeke machines. Tech support/ parts / training is outstanding. Yes, they're expensive, but you get what you pay for in this world.

Sorry about that. We cut work surfaces out of HPL and thermally fused material. We are looking for a machine that can handle 160-210 sheets (various mix of 4x8, 5x8, 5x10) of material per day across 2 shifts. We have to do routing as well as horizontal drilling. We were looking into doing the auto-loader and un-loader as well.

The salesman made a pretty good pitch about the machine, and I walked away very interested. I got the impression that they were the best that money could buy and that you are paying for a quality product. When I walked away from the Komo meeting I was excited, but then I started to hear some mixed messages so I was curious as to other people's experiences.

That's a lot of sheets per day! You don't have to answer this, but think to yourself if your actually shipping the equivalent of that much in product every day. If you are, then good for you!

Also, just a thought, but if you have alot of horizontal boring, (and it seems you do), consider looking into a companion machine for this, such as a Weeke ABD dowel inserter. It will be MUCH faster than setting single parts on a nested machine so you can horizontal bore, AND it's likely that the operator can run the ABD within the cycle time of the Nested Router, so you get more throughput out of this cell.

Just to give you an idea of how fast these machines can be, we have an accusystems HPJ here. One time, the operator and I both stood on each end of the machine, with a stack of parts. (6" x 24" with 2 dowels needed on each short end). The machine pendulum processes, and we could move fast enough to place the part, remove it, and set it on the pile. In other words, the machine was still waiting for us. We blew through a pallet of these in no time.

Well the number of sheets is not necessarily indicative of the number of parts we are cutting per day. We produce various shapes and sizes of products, so a board can yield out anywhere from 1 to 4 parts. So production really depends on the mix for that day. But more or less, we end up shipping what we cut for the day. That number of boards is also taking into consideration some future expansion, so we want a machine that will be able to support that.

Also I unfortunately made a typo. I meant to say vertical drilling instead of horizontal. However that information is still useful to me because we have an older Rover 30 that will be needing replacement in the next couple of years.

If i were you i would call Biesse and Stiles and get them to recommend they feel is best and then compare the two spec for spec. (In my opinion you will need auto loading and unloading). When it comes to routers/companies they are the only two that seem to be constantly evolving and investing.

Especially considering the number of sheets you are talking you need to look past the salesman's smoke and mirrors and start considering how the machines are built and how they will be serviced. Your "handle" is young machine engineer assuming that is your specialty, use that skill to break down the machine by motor, drive system, bearing, controller, frame, vacuum, vacuum distribution, etc.. and you will find major differences between all brands.

There are several things to look at before making the move to nesting.

What is your current process? Why do you think nesting is a better alternative.

What is the nature of the parts you are machining? Are the parts rectangles with limited drilling or complex shapes with multiple tool changes required for machining. This will give a better idea of the cycle time and machine requirements.

160-210 - sheets per day over 2 shifts. This amounts to 1 sheet every 6 to 4.5 minutes. Depending on the patterns you are cutting this may or may not be possible. Salesman often overlook the human factor when sheets per day is discussed. Also salesman like to talk about cutting speeds and positioning speeds, but seldom talk about boring speeds and the amount of time to process. It has been my experience that boring often takes as much or more time as routing takes in a pattern.

Type of machine. Moving Gantry or Moving Table. The machines you noted, it looks like Komo is a moving table and the Weeke is a moving gantry. The different types of machines can have substantial different costs. Also the quality of components and expected life span of the machine.

Material Handing or not. Material handling is a nice option and will shorten your sheet to sheet time, and get you more through put in a day. The option is not cheap but neither is hourly wage labor. In the end material handling should pay for itself.

Horizontal Boring. As previously mentioned, horizontal boring is not a good option for any flat table machine. A dedicated horizontal boring machine will be much, much, much more efficient.

In the end, investigate your different options, there are several out there.

Control. What type of control does the machine have, Is Komo still using a Fanuc control? If so this I like that the this is an industrial control and quite popular, meaning parts and service are fairly easy to come by. What type of control does the Weeke have.

In the shop I work for we have a Komo w/ material handling which was purchased in 2008, when machines were still manufactured in Minnesota. It is a good machine and we have had very few issues with that machine.

Currently we have an older nested based SCM router that is handling our machining capabilities. I'm not overly thrilled with the idea about purchasing another SCM router because they only have tech support 8-5:30 which is a major problem in my eyes considering we run two shifts a day. We are looking to expand what we can cut per day so that's why we are looking at this purchase.

Primarily we are cutting squares and straight lines. We do cut radius pieces as well. All our routing is done with the same cutter, and I get about a shift worth of production out of my cutter. We do have some vertical drilling, but it's not a lot of holes. Probably in the neighborhood of 4-5 average if the board has any at all. Komo uses a Fanuc controller while the Weeke uses a Siemens controller.

Dan, since you seem to have purchased a Komo more recently than anyone else, could you please tell me what kind you purchased, what made you purchase this machine, any problems you have had with it, and your experience with their tech support dept and parts dept. Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

That is information that was missing earlier in this post. If you have the room, You could do the rectangles on a cnc controlled beam saw. That will save loads of time on the router, save money on tooling and up your efficiency big time. Unless you have drilling operations after the perimeter cuts, you might be able to eliminate the second shift machining. If the parts require secondary machining, you might consider a beam saw plus a lower cost point to point cnc for those operations. Those machines are typically cheaper to buy and operate than a nested based router.

We purchased a Komo MachOne VR512, which at the time was a moving table machine. The machine we purchased ismore closely related to the current Xtreme and not the current MachOne.

There were a few reasons we purchased a Komo vs the other machines we had looked at back in 2008.

- Material Handling, was a driving factor. Komo had a number of installs with material handling. Many other manufacturers where not offering material handling at that time or were fairly new to the material handling aspect.

- It was my opinion that the Komo CNC router and other routers in this class were designed for heavier production and longer life span than other flat table machines.

- The people I worked with at Komo were knowledgeable and sincere. Technical support was very good.

- Komo was located 90minutes from our facility. This was a good feature for, support, technicians, parts and training. Of course Komo is now located in New Jersey.

As for issues with the CNC Router, there have been very few and downtime has been virtually none. The biggest issue was probably a Fanuc Z-Axis control, which I contacted Fanuc directly which had a tech at our site in about an hour. A part was ordered and we were running the next morning.

As we have had the machine for about 6-years now, I would say the machine is still in very good condition, we operate 35-60 hours of run time a week on the machine and overall there are minimal issues. Compared to other CNC we have purchased this has been the best.

Contact me via the forum and I will be happy to answer your questions.

YME:
You may also consider 2 'smaller' less costly machines and supporting equipment depending on your product mix as opposed to one large 'do everything' machine. Think 'work cells' as opposed to one large machine that you have to feed everything through. (I have ran large fast very high volume machines, and now run a smaller, slower machine with matching Edgebander. One man runs both simultaneously supplying parts for my assembly station still faster than we can assemble. When time to do more I'll simply add another smaller simpler less costly cnc and good edgebander as opposed to trying to get a big machine that can do it all. This logic applies for other product lines, counters, and the like)
Depending on your product mix, changing incoming sheet size, and and where outgoing parts need to go next in your plant, change over times can get a little cumbersome, and work flow get congested.
Don't let sales people blind you with fast cycle times. Where will the constraint likely move to in your operation after you add cnc? If you can cut 10 sheets an hour on your cnc but you can't ship more than 3 sheets of finished product an hour, then you have only added the ability to make a mountain of waste in your system. Is this cutting stage part of your operation a constraint at all currently? If you do a lot of closets for example, a beam saw and large # of spindles double line drill will beat a panel router (with expensive drill head) all day long.

What will happen if(when) your one machine goes down? Do you still have a viable way to process parts, what about in 5 years when the skill and practices to do the old manual way have all but disappeared from your shop floor due to lack of use?

Larger machines require more power, dust collection, space etc than smaller machines. They are less flexible to move and such if you subscribe to Lean Manufacturing and the ability to change is important.

Others have made some good possible suggestions of beam saws and dedicated equipment.

Right now things are rosy because the stock market is booming. In times like this it is really easy to forget times like 5 years ago. Has anybody discussed with you the reasons why a barrel of oil today costs half of what it did last July?

You've gotten a lot of great advice from guys who understand gear. You've gotten the best advice about process from Jay.

We are extremely happy with our KOMO Xtreme 5x12 machine with material handling. Hands down the best machine in our facility. Last I heard all machines are manufactured in the US now, not in China. Parts and support is great. Don't bite off more machine then you can chew. I'd be happy to answer any of your questions or contact your local rep: http://www.komo.com/komo-dealers-domestic.html

When I read the last post with the quote "Don't bite off more machine then you can chew", I have to say that I could not disagree more with that sentiment. It is almost always better to grow into a machine than to find out a year or two into it that that machine falls short of your needs. I have seen this mistake made time and time again. Saving money today will cost you more down the road when you needs change.

We've got an older Komo that was built in US. Great, well made machine. Support has remained excellent. We've had 3 routers, two with Fanuc controls, motors etc. Top of the line stuff, excellent support available because they are the standard in the machine tool business. We've had one machine with Siemens controls, motors etc. will never have another!

We've never had a middle of the road or cheapy machine so I don't know how well they would hold up. Our machines run all day and often 2nd shift. If most of your work is rectangles W/O boring, the beam saw along with a router for the odd stuff makes a lot of sense. We run a Schelling saw, excellent support. The new vertical router/drills are fast for rectangles and may compliment the saw. They do look lightly made compared to production routers though. Also they aren't for parts that will have sections cut away.

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